I have a tank friend, who swears that Mastery is not good, and is attempting to gear for avoidance.

His character sheet stats:

13.39% Dodge13.52% parry36.37% block=63.28% CTC (+5% miss)

He contends that this is the appropriate way to gear because his avoidance is higher than mine, and as such he is avoiding more hits.

For the record, I'm at

10.98% Dodge 11.19% Parry 54.83% Block=77% CTC (+5% miss)

I tried to explain that while he does avoid more full hits than me, I take less damage over the course of a fight because I have 18.46% higher chance to take 40% less damage, while he has a 4.74% higher chance to avoid the damage all together.

I have tried to come at it from a logical mathematical approach. I need a way to approach it in "plain english". He isn't a guildy, so I can't take him on a run and "prove it".

Athos wrote:I can't think of a better way to explain it than laying out the facts like you did.

Perhaps you could use the "healing is less spikey for your healers" approach.

this

i think you should do runs in a reg dungeon with a fairly standard T&S boss (i just cant think of any right off the top of my head) then show the differences of damage taken from recount or w/e meter you use

or you could send him here....i promise we will play nice..ish

Brekkie:Tanks are like shitty DPS. And healers are like REALLY distracted DPSAmirya:Why yes, your penis is longer than his because you hit 30k dps in the first 10 seconds. But guess what? That raid boss has a dick bigger than your ego. Flex:I don't make mistakes. I execute carefully planned strategic group wipes.Levie:(in /g) It's weird, I have a collar and I dont know where I got it from, Worgen are kinky!Levie:Drunk Lev goes and does what he pleases just to annoy sober Lev.Sagara:You see, you need to *spread* the bun before you insert the hot dog.

Shoju wrote:I have a tank friend, who swears that Mastery is not good, and is attempting to gear for avoidance.

His character sheet stats:

13.39% Dodge13.52% parry36.37% block=63.28% CTC (+5% miss)

He contends that this is the appropriate way to gear because his avoidance is higher than mine, and as such he is avoiding more hits.

For the record, I'm at

10.98% Dodge 11.19% Parry 54.83% Block=77% CTC (+5% miss)

I tried to explain that while he does avoid more full hits than me, I take less damage over the course of a fight because I have 18.46% higher chance to take 40% less damage, while he has a 4.74% higher chance to avoid the damage all together.

I have tried to come at it from a logical mathematical approach. I need a way to approach it in "plain english". He isn't a guildy, so I can't take him on a run and "prove it".

Someone able to give me an "easy" way to explain this?

I find reducing everything to samples of 100 when explaining all things percentage-related to non-mathematical types is usually pretty effective. Even if you just present some quick napkin math it should be quite obvious to him.

Shoju wrote:Sadly, he was, but he was a warrior. I will come at him with the 100's napkin math, and the Healer piece. See if he can understand that.

I don't follow why playing a Warrior at that time would make a difference. Warriors also had to meet minimum levels of defense skill to be uncrittable up until 4.0, just like Paladins. Were you thinking "unhittable"/"block-capped", which was generally somewhere between impractical and completely pointless for Warriors until 4.0?

Hokahey wrote:I don't follow why playing a Warrior at that time would make a difference. Warriors also had to meet minimum levels of defense skill to be uncrittable up until 4.0, just like Paladins. Were you thinking "unhittable"/"block-capped", which was generally somewhere between impractical and completely pointless for Warriors until 4.0?

Yes, they needed defense, but they didn't need 102.4 like we did, since they just spammed shield block all day long. He looks at 102.4 as an "old outdated Paladin number".

Digren wrote:Walk him through the MDR math (you will take less total damage than him).

Walk him through the CTC math (you will have fewer spikes than him).

Unfriend him.

I walked him through it last night, He is starting to come around to it. I can't unfriend him sadly. He is a childhood friend, and at times I REALLY wish he wouldn't have found me online. He comes at tanking from what seems like (and I could be wrong) such a "warrior" mentality, that he struggles with Paladin ideas. It wasn't until I showed him the math last night, and the way mastery works, that he understood why I wear the Signet of the Elder Council and Tia's Grace.

Shoju wrote:Sadly, he was, but he was a warrior. I will come at him with the 100's napkin math, and the Healer piece. See if he can understand that.

I don't follow why playing a Warrior at that time would make a difference. Warriors also had to meet minimum levels of defense skill to be uncrittable up until 4.0, just like Paladins. Were you thinking "unhittable"/"block-capped", which was generally somewhere between impractical and completely pointless for Warriors until 4.0?

Yeah, I had quite a few discussions about that topic during BC.

It more or less goes like this:Warriors can become crush immune because of shieldblock for two hits. Paladins can´t become crush immune, because they don´t have sheld block. Shield block= makes tank crush immune.

Yeah total crap and shows a big lack of knowledge about tanking mechanics.Ah well I remember my fellow co tank during a planning session for tanking flames on Illidan ask me why I add up the numbers. Doesn´t the game check them separately. First miss, then check if dodged, then parry then block. Well, our guild lead valued him more for his video skills. Of course he cut the video like he was the hero saving the day.

So yeah it doesn´t surprise me at alll that old school warriors don´t know what the combat table actually is. Many do, some don´t.So seems your friend finally got it. Perhaps an even easier explanation. 3 times out of 10 he gets hit in the face. You got hit only two times on your nose, and you have your arms up one more time then him. Then ask him if he likes getting his nose punched.

Or he has to pay more and more to full evade, block stuff is cheaper and you don´t get taxed the more you have.

Shoju wrote:Yeah, not you. I know you listen. After I talked to him and got him to understand, we shared parses from raiding this week, as we both did halfus. The Damage taken is astoundingly different.

Our fight was 4:14. I took 1665014 damage.

His fight was 4:29. He took 2125031 damage.

So your friend took about 27% more damage than you did for roughly the same fight.Your CTC is about 14% greater than his.

That is roughly in line with the difference in my damage taken versus that of our warrior tank who stacks expertise/stamina. My CTC is 11% greater than his and on most raids that are apple to apple comparisons, my damage taken is about 25% to 30% less than his.

Our healers, GM and Raid Leader were all completely sold on stacking Mastery, Parry and Dodge. But the warrior tank says that Dodge is less important and he need to stack Expertise for threat.

They are all so fed up with his lack of listening that they are ready to just make him DPS and get another Pally Tank that would gear correctly.

Is there something about warrior tanks that makes them different from Pally Tanks? In general they seem to minimize Dodge and stack Expertise. I know Parry is better for warrior tanks to proc Hold the Line. But that doesn't seem like a valid reason to ignore Dodge and overall CTC in favor of stacking Expertise and/or Hit. I have searched EJ.com but cannot find anything about warrior tanks to explain this. Are these guys just wrong?

A warrior can dial in 102.4 for ten seconds every thirty. Arguably that gives them some extra room to take excessive damage during the periods when healers fall asleep, in as much as there are any such periods to begin with.

yappo wrote:A warrior can dial in 102.4 for ten seconds every thirty. Arguably that gives them some extra room to take excessive damage during the periods when healers fall asleep, in as much as there are any such periods to begin with.

A warrior can only do that if they are at 75%* passively.

*adjust for boss mobs.

We live in a society where people born on third base constantly try to steal second, yet we expect people born with two strikes against them to hit a homerun on the first pitch.

The difference can be made up for by using divine protection proactively, so I don't really see it as imbalanced or broken. Warriors don't really gear any differently than paladins aside from a slight prioritization of parry over dodge due to Hold the Line (which is questionable anyway due to DR). EJ does have a very good Prot warrior thread which reads almost identically to any paladin FAQ on this site.

yappo wrote:A warrior can dial in 102.4 for ten seconds every thirty. Arguably that gives them some extra room to take excessive damage during the periods when healers fall asleep, in as much as there are any such periods to begin with.

Cascadian wrote:Our healers, GM and Raid Leader were all completely sold on stacking Mastery, Parry and Dodge. But the warrior tank says that Dodge is less important and he need to stack Expertise for threat.

They are all so fed up with his lack of listening that they are ready to just make him DPS and get another Pally Tank that would gear correctly.

Is there something about warrior tanks that makes them different from Pally Tanks? In general they seem to minimize Dodge and stack Expertise. I know Parry is better for warrior tanks to proc Hold the Line. But that doesn't seem like a valid reason to ignore Dodge and overall CTC in favor of stacking Expertise and/or Hit. I have searched EJ.com but cannot find anything about warrior tanks to explain this. Are these guys just wrong?

To start, yes, your co-tank is just wrong. He shouldn't need threat stats any more than you do (arguably, he may need them less). He needs to put Vigilance on you and soak in that sweet, sweet, FREE Vengeance he gets from you being punched in the face. He needs to stop pursuing Expertise or Hit, and pursue Mastery and Avoidance. He needs to gear just like you. The days of "EH before all else, always" are over.

The problem is, this is the first time in a very VERY long time Warriors have ever gotten more benefit from picking up avoidance than just stacking Stamina and threat. The historical rhetoric of Avoidance being for complete morons (and Paladins ) probably makes it difficult to tell if someone advocating gearing that way isn't just a troll, or another clueless noob.

In BC, Avoidance and Block Rating had no value because Shield Block made the next 2 attacks against you Blocked. It lasted 6 seconds, and could be refreshed every 5. The only time Avoidance mattered was in the period between when your charges were used up and the cooldown on Shield Block came up again. The only times that typically became worrisome on raid bosses at the time were if they had an unusually fast swing speed (like Prince in Karazhan, Phase 2), or parry haste. Plus, pushing toward being "uncrushable" was too costly in terms of lost survivability for Warriors. The removal of Crushing Blows from raid bosses was almost as much a buff to Warriors as it was to Druids, maybe more.

In Wrath, baseline avoidance values for all tanks was so high that its value was near meaningless. The only encounter I can think if where Warriors valued block rating heavily was tanking adds on Anub'Arak. Even though baseline avoidance was still high, stacking enough avoidance/Block Rating to become "Block capped" was still impractical for generalized tanking.

yappo wrote:

Flex wrote:

yappo wrote:A warrior can dial in 102.4 for ten seconds every thirty. Arguably that gives them some extra room to take excessive damage during the periods when healers fall asleep, in as much as there are any such periods to begin with.

Granted. More importantly, Mastery remains quite good beyond that point, because the excess chance to Block during Shield Block becomes more chance to Crit. Block. There's no good reason to drop Mastery/Avoidance for threat right now.